jondwhite wrote:Can you be a
Why not? Positivism is a form of materialism and most people are in practice “positivists” without realising it, ie they base their actions and ideas on what they have experienced or learned from other people’s experience. It wasn’t for nothing that Dietzgen called his main work The Positive Outcome of Philosophy. Personally, I think A J Ayer’s (who was a Logical Positivist) Language, Truth and Logic (1936) does a brilliant demolition job on metaphysics and religion. I remember a member who spoke at Hyde Park who refused to use the word “God” but said G-O-D instead on the grounds that the word “God” was meaningless as it referred to nothing. Pure Logical Positivism.The only “philosophical” criterion for being a member of the WSM is to be a materialist, who rejects all religion. So, any materialist, whether dialectical or positivist or behaviourist or empiricist or rationalist or secularist or humanist or whatever, is welcome. At least that’s the practice. It’s only those who are non-materialists (as judged by their attitide to religion) who are ineligible to join.